Verbal thinking Aspergians

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My brother said the reason he favored psychological explanations was at least you could work on them.

He has a job and stuff but is uninsured because he had a really hard time keeping regular jobs for a wide variety of reasons and eventually his employer told him they would work with him as a consultant rather than hire him directly.

One thing you said rang a bell for me despite other major differences in how we think. You said your memory was only good when triggered by a test.

In my case the difference between having my memory triggered by something versus working because I asked it to is huge.

If a memory is triggered there will be an incredible amount of detail. If it's not triggered then I am lucky if I can recall the flimsiest fuzziest bit of information. People either tell me I have a good memory or a terrible one depending on which situation they have seen me in.

And for me the triggered vs. voluntary thing isn't limited to memory. It affects every movement from complex to simple. It affects thought. It affects the ability to move from thought to action. It affects literally every single aspect of my life in countless ways.

If that is an aspect of your problem, that alone will cause a massive difference in your ability to function. I started out with problems in that area but the gap kept widening over time.

I don't know if you read my monstrosity of a reply when you asked what I meant by daily living tasks or something like that, but half my problem with those tasks is a severe problem in that area. The other half has to do with how I process information.

If the gap between automatic/triggered and voluntary memory is a part of your problem I'd encourage reading:

http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/behavi ... elook.html

Don't be fooled by their use of the word movement, for them it also means internal movements like thought and memory.

I can't remember (gee...) what all is in the following article but it's by the same authors the first article quotes from:

http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/1060/1225

Anyway if that is a component of your problems that would explain a lot right there. I don't know of any tests for these things (it'd be hard to test some of this stuff because it makes functioning variable and a person who had trouble with them could get lucky and pass the test). But if they sound familiar then that right there might mean more than a test would.

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Exactly!! !....People who still view psychological problems as a "character defect" might not see it this way though. That is....I suppose some people might prefer to believe they have a neurological problem they could do nothing about instead of psychological ones they could've changed and failed to. This seems contrary to one's rational self-interest to me. It would be like preferring Cystic Fibrosis over heroin addiction simply because of the shame and stigma associated with the latter. But....to each their own I guess





Yes....it certainly seems that way. For example...in psychology class I could read and highlight a chapter or two the night before an exam. I would take the exam the next day and pass it with flying colors. Now I should try to clarify a few things before somebody says it's no wonder my memory seems so bad considering these awful study habits. Most of the reading I have done in my life has not been required reading within the academic milieu. I have been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. Like most people, I generally read about things which interest me. And I have often read the same books over and over. But no matter how many times i've read something, I only seem to remember isolated details and a few general facts even moments after the reading is complete. For example, i've read various (not to mention the SAME accounts many times over) accounts of the Battle of the Bulge in my life. But to this day.....I can only remember a few details and general facts about the battle. Needless to say....unless we decide upon some self-examination, there is no test involved with recreational reading and thus no cue, trigger, or prompt.

It's very difficult to describe actually and therein lies PART of the frustration.



In my case it does seem limited to memory. Oh I can *beat* most people at Jeopardy...even some of the contestants. But ask me to TELL you (or write about) about a given subject (like the Battle of the Bulge) i've read about a hundred times and I will be able to recall about one minute's worth (or one page's worth if it's in writing) of information, if that.






Yes I did and i'm very sorry if it was a burden for you. I didn't reply simply because it was overwhelming to me and I didn't think anything I could say in response would do it justice. Sometimes I just feel it's better to stay silent and let people speak for themselves. I don't pretend to have any idea about what others are going through and dealing with in life. I don't even like to use terms like "going through" and "dealing with" (but I will here just for the sake of simplicity) because such terms imply something negative. Perhaps the person in question doesn't view their situation as negative in the least and it would be presumptous of me to assume that they do. All i've ever asked for is the same consideration in return.

Thanks for the links and I will check them out ASAP . I might not get to them tonight as it's getting rather late in my neck of the woods and whatever brains I have are starting to enter shutdown mode.

Grandin also stipulates that anyone who can read/write thinks in words to some degree.

I almost failed first grade and went for a psych eval & general IQ testing... I blew away their block patterning test. Even after the official part ended, they gave me some harder ones to see how far I could go, just for fun... They had me replicating pics that were 8x8 block designs They said no one had ever gotten that far before (especially completing the puzzles as quickly).

is it possible to be more of an auditory learner and have a high verbal iq yet still not be much of a word thinker? i am very good at making verbal associations, yet, since i perceive the world differently from an nt, i find that using words and categories to think blocks transcendence of thought.

also, given how complicated asd's are, i find the whole verbal vs. nonverbal thing to be very unsatisfactory. for example, some of us may do well in geometry despite having almost no sense of direction. and some of us, like me, may have better expressive than receptive language.

also, some of us may have a good vocabulary and score really high on the similarities subtest, but still have an odd way of learning language (learning language based on patterns rather than semantics or social constructs).

Based on that description I am probably a hyper-verbal ASD person.

Only look? I once wanted to know this and it took me several minutes and a number of attempts to figure it out. Eventually I took the smart way out and realised that as there is a number for each side, beginning with 1 and ending with 6, there must be exactly 6 sides (actually I looked at each side of the dice, wrote the number on a scrap of paper, then looked at each side to check I had the number written down and only after this fact realised that there would of course be six sides for the previously described reasons). I just could not figure it out using the dice itself as I could not see all sides at once and would be confused about which sides I had counted when I moved the dice to see the other side. Hilariously, there are people who actually think that I am clever...



Personally I find it extraordinarily difficult to "see" such images. I cannot imagine a person based on physical descriptions, if I want to understand a physical action described I have to try to act it out by following the description. My early attempts at non-verbal cues were all about trying to "create" the looks on faces described in books that I was reading and to this day I try to act out on my face the expressions described in books for characters when I read them. For me, it takes a lot of work to try to come up with an understanding of physical descriptions, I have to go step by step trying to translate between the words and what is meant by them.


Good description. For me it is more like the fleeting impression of an image rather than an actual image.


I use phonetics, but this requires that I understand how a word should be pronounced, and also is not as useful with vowels. I often use a different word to the one I want to use just because I cannot figure out how to spell the word I want to use and cannot always be bothered to get a dictionary out. Sometimes I get "tough" with myself and just make myself use the word I want to use, even though it is probably misspelled. I also have trouble pronouncing some words, with the odd effect that some words I only use when writing (as I cannot pronounce them) and others I only use when speaking (as I cannot spell them).

When Temple Grandin talks about those who think in words, verbal logic, she says that those who are in this area have poor drawing skills. I believe that because of what I read about people with Aspergers and Autism doing well with words but not with the IQ block test. I have Aspergers and I have superior verbal fluency and high average visual spatial skills, but my visual processing is compromised due to ADHD, although I'm extremely good with language, I am also am artist and am very good, I have a little bit of a problem with proportions at times and I am a perfectionist in my artwork, but if I'm able to produce artwork, obviously I have visual spatial skills too. Even in light of what Temple Grandin says about visual thinkers versus verbal logic thinkers....can someone on the spectrum have both? Cause I think I have th Val logic thinking, but also visual thinking...just not the musical Mathematical thinking